Her Enemy
by MorganvilleFanatic
Summary: Kim is trying to find a way to feel confident about herself and her body. However, not everything is as easy for a teenager who is struggling with a serious eating disorder.
1. Chapter 1

The beginning

We all feel it from time to time. The deadly glares of others burning your back, making your legs weak and self-conscious. The pain of knowing you're being judged but feeling helpless in improving yourself. Wondering 'what do they really think of me?'

All these things were a daily struggle for Kim. She was a thirteen year old in year nine, silently crying for help from the inside. She hated everything about herself, from the curves on her hips, her pointy nose, how her eyebrows were almost invisible. The only thing that made her feel good about herself was her eating disorder.

Kim's body was like a punching bag. It received abuse almost every day. Every now and then, a punching bag will split and bleed whatever it had been stuffed with. This is a sign of it showing weakness, it is practically saying 'I give up'. Well, Kim's body would show the same signs. For example, she would get pains in her stomach from forcing herself to throw up too much. Sometimes after she'd puked up her dinner, overnight her stomach would shrink. This made her satisfied, it made her feel like she was doing something productive. Something… right.

This had been a pattern for about a month now. She hadn't told anyone about it- and she wouldn't ever. She was afraid that if she told someone, they would think she was lying, because she was too fat to have bulimia. What if she told someone she thought she could trust- and they told it to someone else, and eventually it got spread round the whole school, and she would be a laughing stock? She would be that fat girl that lied about her eating disorder for attention.

Her bulimia would be her secret.

A month before, around the start of her high-school experience, she had been questioning herself. 'Why do I still have this baby fat when everyone else gets to be skinny?' 'Why can't I be like the characters from my books?'

However, the books Kim read were about privileged teens in Manhattan, and her favourite character, the character that influenced her, had bulimia. This fictional character would throw up to feel better, and she was one of the most popular girls in her school. She was seen as gorgeous, rich and perfect. Kim wanted to be all of those things, and since she felt fat, uncomfortable and awkward in her own skin, she decided 'what's the worst that could happen?'

This was just after her birthday- and she still had half a cake left, and she realised that most bulimics would binge, then purge to make themselves feel better. So she stuffed her face with about six slices of cake, cramming in piece after piece, the tangy lemon icing making her throat thick with sickliness. After heading to the bathroom, kneeling down at the toilet and trying her hardest to push her index finger into her throat, somehow her gag reflex was too good. She tried for a while, but nothing worked. She felt useless and fat, having just eaten an entire birthday cake.

Day after day, Kim tried to purge up her food. Instead, she didn't binge. She just ate her average amount, then before getting into the shower, she would try to shove her finger down her throat once again.

One day, it worked. She had finally done it. This made her feel pleased with herself, as though she had done something right for a change. Little did she know what she was getting herself into. She had just entered a whole new, messy world. Her bulimia was her enemy.


	2. Chapter 2

Moving on

Finding happiness was one of the last things on Kim's list. Funnily enough, being skinny was number one. She would try for days to see a difference in herself each day- but for her, she still felt like the same chubby girl.

Every day after school, she would come home and have a snack- but before her mum got home, she would head to the toilet and force it back up again. Sometimes she worried that her brother could hear her from his room, which was beside the bathroom- but he never mentioned anything.

One Monday, Kim was reading about the magnificent characters in her books, they were glamorous, rich, beautiful and popular- but they were never happy. They were all skinny, and to Kim, if she were to be skinny, that would be all that would make her happy. That night, she told her mum she didn't want what she was cooking her.

'I just want a salad,' she told her mother. 'You don't have to cook for me, its fine.'

In her books, one of the characters had said 'please, you haven't eaten bread since middle school.' This quote really spoke to Kim. Of course- they were thin, all they ate was things with zero fat in it.

'But you'll starve!' Kim's mum said. 'That's not enough!'

On TV, some parents let their kids just go casually without any dinner. Why couldn't Kim's mum let her have a salad? It wasn't fair. This was the reason Kim wasn't thin yet. She was practically forced to eat these huge meals her mother had cooked for her.

'I'll be fine.' Kim insisted, aggressively. 'Please, just let me handle it.' Her mum was reluctant, but watched her make the salad.

For a few nights, Kim didn't throw up. She was fine about it. She had only had her bulimia for about two months now. Things were starting to piece together, and she felt like a new person for the time being.

She had noticed a few things when she started to recover: her mood had increased by about three hundred per cent. Her fingernails were growing faster and stronger, and the spots and pimples on her face started to fade. But she still felt as though day by day she was getting fatter.

Kim couldn't help it: night and day she obsessed about her weight- it was like her drug. 'Why can't I just be happy?!' she cried. 'Why does everyone else get the happy ending and never me?'

She cried herself to sleep most nights that month. High school had changed her. If you wanted to be even glanced at by a boy, you had to weigh less than a stone.

Kim had been fighting to be skinny since she was about seven years old; but high school had put this entire storm of pressure on her shoulders.

The only thing that seemed to help was putting herself through pain. One night, Kim took a pair of scissors from the kitchen drawer while her mum was in the bath and sneaked them up to her room. Eagerly, she began to slice at her wrists. She didn't go as deep as she would have wanted too- she didn't want to get blood on the scissors.

She had tried cutting a few times before. Truth be told- she had tried suicide a few times before.

She had a memory from when she was about eight- she was very unhappy. Mainly because she was a large child- she had always felt less attractive and less loved as a young girl because she thought she was never good enough. At this point her family were awaiting a holiday to Greece, and Kim was depressed. She remembered saying to herself 'that's it- I give up. I want to die.' Something like this wasn't common in an eight year old. She remembered saying 'I will kill myself. I will. But Greece first.'

Another time wasn't so long ago. In the summer holidays before high school- Kim was anxious and stressed about leaving middle school behind. She had always clung onto the past too much. Things were made worse when she had an argument with her older sister (who she never got on with) and she was brought to painful, chocking tears. In her bedroom she pulled out a cotton scarf and attached it to a coat hook above her bed-side table, then wrapped it around her neck. Crouching on the cabinet, she tried her hardest to lift her feet up- but every time she tried her body would refuse and force one foot back to the ground.

Watching the blades leave scratches on her wrists, Kim thought about her life. She always knew she was different. She knew her friends didn't do these things- although she knew some people in her school cut themselves like her.

She wondered if anyone else was going through what she would.

She wondered if anyone even understood how much it hurt to be her.


End file.
